- As Holly Dicker noted in her review of last year's edition, Utrecht's Le Guess Who? is not an electronic festival. It's an event aimed at anyone with a broad interest in music. Running from Nov 19th through the 22nd, this was its ninth edition, and the second at TivoliVredenburg, a huge, new city-centre complex of concert rooms linked by escalators and open areas with bars, food stands and merchandise stalls. The building's size and glassy exterior sometimes made moving between the venues feel like a routine shopping trip, but the spaces were always impressive when you got there.
Best of all was Grote Zaal, an octagonal auditorium typically used for opera and classical concerts. (Grote Zaal actually existed decades before TivoliVredenburg did, and the new building was built around it.) Several of the weekend's best performances took place there, starting with Faust's opening night set, which was a good introduction to both the impressiveness of the venues and the festival's experimental vibe. There were yelping spoken-word interludes, gas canisters repurposed as percussion instruments, and three women sitting knitting at the lip of the stage.
Even better was to come on Saturday. Charlemagne Palestine made for an odd but mesmerising start, though things really kicked into gear with Shabazz Palaces' taut, funky hip-hop in a space eight floors up called Cloud Nine. Sunn O))), swathed as usual in druidic robes and blankets of smoke, turned out mind-altering walls of noise, complemented at one point by a beautiful, trombone-led segment. Virtuoso saxophonist Kamasi Washington and his band presented a joyous distillation of The Epic, his three-hour jazz masterpiece recently released on Brainfeeder. Their set was topped off with Rhode Island bass-and-drums pair Lightning Bolt, tight and chaotic as ever following a long hiatus. All in all, it was one of the most enjoyable evenings of music I've heard in a long time.
Aside from Tivoli, LGW? used 13 other venues around the city during the four days. The spaces varied hugely, from the 1000-year-old Janskerk church where Julia Holter and Magical Cloudz turned in suitably mediative, absorbing sets, to the dark De Helling club, where Demdike Stare assailed the crowd with discordant noise for 20 minutes before levelling out into something almost danceable. The festival's multi-venue approach also meant that you were rewarded for wandering the city, stumbling every now and then across venues bearing the question mark logo.
Le Mini Who?, a free-to-all, parallel event hosting daytime bills of smaller Dutch acts on Saturday and Sunday, was particularly good for unplanned discoveries. We found ourselves in a canal-side bar on Saturday after some food and a few beers, and left enraptured by the superb garage-pop of Amsterdam band Apneu. These sorts of shows, along with a plethora of other LGW? side-attractions (a two-day record fair, film screenings, free entrance to the city's Centraal Museum), make the festival what it is. Few other inner-city events interact with their surroundings in such a warm and fluid way.
On Sunday night, after taking in more of Le Mini Who? in the city's Oosterkade/Westerkade area, I headed to the Tivoli for a pared-down, and on paper more relaxed, final night. When I got there, though, it was immediately clear that The Pop Group had missed the memo. It's often wise to approach reformed post-punk survivors with some caution, but Mark Stewart's charges sounded thrillingly urgent, the band's sinuous basslines and serrated guitars a reminder that they always thought of themselves as a funk outfit first and a punk band second. A rare live show from revered septuagenarian composer Annette Peacock—part of a large section of the bill curated by Sunn O)))—finally eased us into end-of-festival mode, and was a fittingly grand farewell to the majestic Grote Zaal.
Le Guess Who? is unlike most other festivals out there, and its strangeness is one of its greatest strengths. I left Utrecht with giddy memories of excellent sets from many long-time favourites, a long list of new records to listen to, ringing ears, and a fearsome hangover. All the signs, then, of a weekend well spent.
Photo credit: Erik Luyten (Lead), Tim Van Veen (Charlemagne Palestine, Kamasi Washington), Juri Hiensch (Le Mini Who?), Jelmer Der Haas (Julia Holter)